“They’re your friends.” It was an easy word to say, but it fell from my lips with more weight than a ship’s anchor. I remembered the Tallows shopkeeper’s words: Zaira doesn’t have any friends.

Zaira’s eyes went white-rimmed, as if I’d threatened her. Then she spun away from me, hugging herself. “Are they?”

“It’s safe for you to care about them now.” I chose my words carefully as if they were footsteps exploring a thin sheet of spring ice that could crack at any second. “With the jess on, you won’t hurt the people close to you anymore.”

“There’s no one close to me,” she snapped. And she strode off down the hall.

Lady Terringer herself stopped at the garrison to check on Venasha’s family. When she found them asleep, she took me aside to tell me that given Prince Ruven’s mounting history of suspicious activities, and his connections to the Shadow Gentry, she was going to have his rooms quietly searched the next day for the missing jess, just in case.

The idea of Ruven possessing a jess left a chill in my bones. He might well be the danger Leodra had warned of, and the name that had died on his lips.

After talking to Lady Terringer, I needed some fresh air. I found a no-nonsense kitchen garden in one of the garrison courtyards, where dusk gathered in shadowed corners and crept up the walls. Late tartgrass blooms cast a pungent musk across the garden. I sank onto a stone bench, my bloodstained skirts spreading around me. It had already been a long day, and I still had to get ready for Gabril’s party tonight.

One of the courtyard doors opened, and Marcello stepped out into the twilight.

He paused in the doorway, staring across the garden at me, shadows pooling in his eyes. The moment stretched longer. I wished he would say something, anything, but he just stood there, as the color leached out of the sky.

I couldn’t take it. “Did you come to look at me, or do you have something to say?”

My own voice sounded frail and foolish against the profundity of the evening silence.

Marcello shook his head, as if breaking a spell, and crossed the garden. Without a word, he sat on the bench beside me and took my hand in his.

His touch sent warm waves all through the core of me. My lips parted, but shock and a building, wondrous alarm choked off speech.

“Please,” he said. “Don’t do this.”

“What?” I snatched my hand back. Was he deliberately confusing me?

Worry drew grave lines into his fine face. “This Shadow Gentry party tonight. It’s too dangerous. Don’t go.”